1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to the field of back-end application and data services, and more particularly to an apparatus and method for providing context-sensitive help functions in a back-end services platform.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computational devices have revolutionized the world of business. During earlier years, when computers were very expensive to operate and maintain, only those businesses who benefited significantly from the utilization of automated data processing techniques would allocate the necessary capital resources to provide such capabilities. During this period, computers were primarily relegated to application within scientific and data processing fields.
Today, there are literally thousands of different types of computers and even more types of application programs. In addition, the use of computers has proliferated from the scientific and data processing workplace, to less-specialized types of businesses, all the way down to the individual user at home.
During the mid 1970's, a number of successful attempts were made to interconnect computers for purposes of sharing data and/or processing capabilities. These interconnection attempts, however, employed special purpose protocols that were intimately tied to the architecture of these computers. As such, the computers were expensive to procure and maintain. The U.S. government, however, realized the power that could be harnessed by allowing computers to interconnect and thus funded research that resulted in what we now know today as the Internet. More specifically, this research provided a series of standards that specify the details of how interconnected computers are to communicate, how to interconnect networks of computers, and how to route traffic over these interconnected networks. The use of these standards allows a computer to communicate across any set of interconnected networks, regardless of the underlying native network protocols that are employed by these networks.
The ability to easily interconnect computer networks for communication purposes provided the motivation for the development of other technologies such as hypertext markup language (HTML) and extensible markup language (XML). HTML and XML allow user-friendly representations of data to be transmitted between computers. The advent of HTML-based developments has resulted in an exponential increase in the number of computers that are interconnected because, now, even home computers can access a number of services over the Internet by merely executing a single web browser application, also known as a thin web client. Microsoft® Internet Explorer® is representative of a typical thin web client. Virtually every computer produced today is sold with web client software already installed. In 1988, only 5,000 computers were interconnected via the Internet. In 1995, under 5 million computers were interconnected via the Internet. But with the maturation of client-server and HTML/XML technologies, presently, over 50 million computers access the Internet.
Since users now have computers at their businesses and at home, many service providers are now providing their particular services over the Internet. For example, users can access and pay bills online, they can do their banking online, they can order goods and merchandise online, and they can even make travel reservations online. Hence, what were once very specialized segments within the service industry are now being viewed as commodities in the eyes of the public. This viewpoint is held by consumers primarily because any number of competitors within a given service segment can easily vie for a customer's business simply by offering a better rate than all other providers in the segment. And competitors no longer have to bear the cost of salesmen and the overhead commensurate with a large sales force—one click of a hyperlink takes a potential customer right to the virtual door of a competitor's place of business.
Because competition is so easily fostered via the Internet, service providers that have traditionally offered narrow channels of service are now scrambling to keep their customer base. And rather than lower their prices and entering into the commodity realm, these service providers are opting to offer “additional” services to their online customers. Many service providers offer customers free email services. Other providers offer free online disk space for file sharing and backup. And many providers are offering a compliment of additional business services (accounting, payroll, purchasing, etc.) in addition to those specialized business services that they have traditionally offered. For example, an Internet search on the string “Small Business Center” today produces over three quarters of a million hits. It is a well-known fact in the industry that small business owners are difficult to cultivate as clients and they are difficult to keep as client. Many banks, insurance companies, payroll companies, and other traditional service providers are now attempting to provide their existing customer base with a full complement of business services.
Yet, for a single service provider to provide a full compliment of business services or other services to existing clients requires an extensive investment in talent and equipment. And rather than make such an investment, traditional service providers are opting to outsource these “additional services” to “back-end” service providers. In theory, a back-end service provider is simply an extension of the primary service provider. When a user at the primary service provider's web site elects to access additional services, the primary service provider typically redirects the user's web browser to the back-end service provider's site. Ideally, the user accesses these back-end services without sensing any change in content, format, or look-and-feel. Preferably, user should experience these additional services without sensing a change in provider sites.
Unfortunately, the ideal case has not been achieved to date, primarily because back-end service providers provide additional services for a number of primary service providers at the same time. And when these primary service providers redirect customers to back-end sites, the result is that the backwards connection to a specific referring provider is lost at all levels other than perhaps at the level where a hyperlink is provided that enables the user to return to the primary provider's site.
One particular problem area involves the provision of help functions and online help services. For example, if a user is referred (i.e., redirected) from Primary Provider A to a back-end provider, when the user executes a link at the back-end provider's site to access, say, customer support contact information, the user expects to be presented with a web page providing contact numbers and addresses for customer support offices at Primary Provider A. But because a meaningful connection with Primary Provider A has not been maintained at the back-end provider, the user is typically provided with a web page having only general purpose help information on it. Nothing on the page specifically corresponds to Primary Provider A. Moreover, any content, format, and look-and-feel of web pages that were formerly associated with a primary provider's web site are forfeited at the point where a user is redirected to the back-end site.
Such loss of continuity cultivates suspicion and reluctance on behalf of customers because they sense a disconnection between their primary service provider and the additional services that the provider allegedly offers. And client suspicion and reluctance bothers primary providers as well because clients that are reluctant to use their additional services will be more susceptible to the offers of their competitors.
Therefore, what is needed are techniques in a back-end service platform that provide help functions to redirected uses in a manner such that the identity (e.g., content, look-and-feel, etc.) of a referring primary provider is maintained.
In addition, what is needed is a back-end help apparatus that allows redirected users to experience help content and format that is specific to a referring primary service provider.
Furthermore, what is needed is a help system that allows a plurality of primary service providers to tailor help content/format at a back-end business operations platform so that users experience partner-specific help functions.
Moreover, what is needed is a method for providing provider-aware help services within a back-end business operations platform where a provider's identity is maintained throughout the session of a user who is referred to the back-end site from the provider's site.